Sangoma P phones: How to make they user a single common voicemail?

I have few Sangoma P phones (310, 330, 370). In the main office there a couple of P370 now with different extension.

I created a general extension with a general voicemail where incoming calls are directed from IVR under some conditions.

I would like the two P370 use the same voicemail and both would be able to listen and manage all the messages of the general voicemail using with the PhoneApp.

I think I assigned the phones to the same general voicemail but I likely made some mistake because the PhoneApp on the phone doesn’t show any message.

Search is your friend; this process is pretty well documented and works.

I think I did the required steps,based on what I found.
I agree that there are many thread on this topis, but not so many with useful and complete answer.
My phones blink red reporting messages in the general mailbox, but the Phone App doesn’t show.
I’m not interested in dialing to the voicemail to manage the messages.
I would like to do with app on the screen.
Would you mind sharing the link of one of these well documented procedures?

I’ve been able to do this for all P-Series phones EXCEPT the P370’s.

The method I’ve used is to configure the physical VM button (for P-Series handsets that have one) to use ‘Standard Voicemail’ (ie. to dial the configured ‘VM-Extn’ value for that extn) rather than open the Voicemail PhoneApp.

The only problem is that the P370’s don’t have a physical VM button, they ONLY have an on-screen option to open the Voicemail PhoneApp (which does NOT respect the configured ‘VM-Key-Type’ and/or ‘VM-Extn’ value for that extn).

I configure the P-Series handsets to use a common/shared VM-box (eg. V/Extn: 300) using the following method;

  1. Use the Advanced tab within the ‘Extensions’ Module to configure what VM-box the Extn should use (to store VMs & monitor via MWI), then dial when the user wants to access that VM-box;

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  1. Use the ‘Options’ tab within the P-Series provisioning Template (in EPM) to configure how the physical VM button should behave (‘Standard Voicemail’ means dial the value held in VM-Extn - ie. *98300 in this case);

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  1. Complete - That combination of settings provide the desired behaviour for P-Series handsets with a physical VM button.

If only the Voicemail PhoneApp would use the configured VM-Extn value to determine what VM-Box to access (like the physical VM Buttons do on ALL Handsets I’ve ever used), then everything would be fine.

I have several small businesses that prefer to have a single common/shared VM-Box instead of one per Extn/User. It’s much easier for them to manage when staff come & go/not all in the office each day.

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Yeah, sorry, we don’t use the PC app for dialing.

The solution that has worked for us involved editing the basefile config for the phones; it wasn’t a fix via the FreePBX GUI.

What you can do, is, use the app on one P370 phone and a favorite line key (*98VM#) on the other P370 phone. I am not sure, if the BLF will work though.

The voicemail app currently just works with THE extension mailbox. I think support for one mailbox per ringgroup is highly needed. FEATURE REQUEST! Please! :wink: @kgupta

My current setup involve a “Favorite” touch button to dial the voice mail but it’s very inconvenient.

We need to type the password. We need to use keyes to manage/delete messages. We can’t see the phone number of the party leaving message. We can’t recall easily…

BTW, BLF status doens’t reflect the presence of messages.

On the flagship most expensive phone this is absolutely unexpected.

Can you elaborate?

Does this allow to use the VoiceMail App to manage the messages?

Thanks for instructions.
I had to do the same approach.

It’s better than nothing but inconvenient and unexpected not being able to use the app on the flagship expensive touch phone.

You are right…but the P370 phone seems to be designed for the boss only and he usually has his own voicemailbox. :wink: The firmware is still in development…many upgrades…
In Europe (Austria) the P370 is now much cheaper…don’t know if this is a global phenomenon or just a local sale.
This is actually a similar price as the Sangoma s705 phone…6 years ago. You cannot compare the two :grin:

We bought Sangoma Phones from from a supplier in Germany, price a bit higher but affordable.
Our use case is for the main office / front desk.
We think the touch interface was more intuitive and easy to use.
An the phone less bulky that a P325+extension.

I really hope we can soon use the app for voicemail.

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easiest thing I’ve found and has worked fine for years is:

In the gui, create a virtual extensions for the “general voicemail”, Example: extension 2000

setup VM on that extension.

Setup vm on all the extensions that will need access to the General VM.

SSH into the phone system.

change directory to /var/spool/asterisk/voicemail/default

there you’ll see directories for the General VM (2000) and all the other phones.

delete the directories for the phones you want to use the general VM.

Create softlinks to the 2000 directory for all the other phones. Then make sure to change ownership on those softlinks to asterisk:asterisk

So if real extension 301 needs to use the general VM, create a softlink 301 → 2000

after that all the VM buttons or BLF will act as if the VM in 2000 is the phones native VM.

(actual linux instructions purposely left out of these instructions because if you don’t know how to do what I described, you probably shouldn’t do it)

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This setup survive a debian/freepbx upgrade?

Soft link created simply ln -s?

Do you know if this allow using the VoiceMail REST App on Sangoma P phones, P330/P370?

Thanks

no idea if it works on 17 but I suspect it should.

yes it allows the use of the visual voicemail apps.